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Revisiting revenue deals.

Article Excerpt
Carriers are changing the economics and measurement of some of their travel agency compensation deals, partly driven by a substantial migration of airline bookings to nontraditional channels. Airline and travel agency sources confirmed a modest revival of revenue-based programs as airline industry recovery remains elusive and marketshare becomes more difficult to measure. Now, certain carriers using data aggregation tools furnished by the Prism Group for the corporate market are considering similar deployment for the agency community.

"A couple of the major airlines have put in place this year parallel override programs, in addition to existing overrides, as a test for revenue programs with the knowledge that lots of stuff is not going through ARC or global distribution systems," said Jerry Behrens, vice president of business solutions at Tzell Travel Specialists in New York. Though Behrens said revenue programs can be flawed, he favored the tests. "Carriers today all want to see more dollars. Revenue as a measurement in today's environment is not a had idea."

Delta Air Lines, for one, is evaluating revenue programs. "Measuring share as a performance goal is becoming less reliable as more direct-report relationships...

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